The Department of Near Eastern Studies is proud and happy to announce that Prof. Glenn M. Schwartz has received this year’s G. Ernest Wright Award from the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) for the most substantial volume dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports, and material culture from the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The award recognizes his edited volume, Animals, Ancestors, and Ritual in Early Bronze Age Syria: An Elite Mortuary Complex from Umm el-Marra (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 2024).

Prof. Schwartz has also been much in the news, such as here and here, because of his announcement regarding the possible earliest alphabetic script inscribed on clay objects which he discovered at Umm el-Marra in Syria.

Congratulations to Professor Schwartz on this achievement!